Sen. Frist, Administrator Whitman to Speak at CCC

Sen. Frist, Administrator Whitman to Speak at CCC

Article excerpt

Senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a leader in crafting legislation to strengthen the country's ability to respond to a bioterrorism attack, will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Congressional City Conference.

Frist will address the delegates on Sunday afternoon, March 10.

Also joining the line up are Christine Todd Whitman, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who will speak on Monday, March 11, and Dr. James Zogby of the Arab American Institute who will speak at the Celebrate Diversity Breakfast on Sunday, March 10.

The Congressional City Conference begins on Friday, March 8, with committee meetings and Leadership Training Institute seminars and concludes on Tuesday, March 12, with visits to Capitol Hill to urge support for the NLC advocacy agenda.

Frist is serving his second term in the U.S. Senate and is the first practicing physician elected to the Senate since 1928. With Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), he co-sponsored the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2001 designed to upgrade federal capacities to respond to bioterrorism, improve the response to bioterrorism at the state and local level, develop new treatments, vaccines and diagnostics, and improve food safety and protections against agricultural bioterrorism. The bill passed in both Houses of Congress in December and will be taken up by a House-Senate conference committee shortly.

Frist serves on the Budget, Foreign Relations, and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committees. He has identified education, health care, and science as his top priorities. Before joining the Senate in 1994, he was on the teaching faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he founded and subsequently directed the center of multi-organ transplant. He has performed 200 heart and lung transplant procedures. …